Llarena releases Ponsatí provisionally and summons her to testify on April 24

The instructor of the 'procés', the magistrate of the Supreme Court (TS) Pablo Llarena, has provisionally released the former Catalan counselor and MEP Clara Ponsatí, and has summoned her to testify on April 24, after she has been arrested by the Mossos D'Esquadra on Tuesday afternoon after her return to Barcelona from Brussels, due to the national arrest warrant against her for an alleged crime of disobedience for 1-O.

In an order from this same Tuesday, to which Europa Press has had access, Llarena annuls the arrest warrant and the declaration of rebellion for Ponsatí to agree to his provisional release, warning that if he continues to ignore the high court, he will be taken before the same "by public force".

The purpose of the arrest warrant was to bring her before the courts to take her statement, something for which Llarena has already set the date and time: next April 24 at 11:00.

And this, explains the magistrate, because "our legal system does not allow the proceeding to continue without first receiving an investigative statement from the rebel defendant."

In addition, it has imposed on her the obligation to "designate an address and telephone number where she can be reached immediately," as well as to "appear before this judicial body as many times as she is called."

The legal sources consulted by Europa Press indicate that Llarena's intention is to follow the same 'road map' as with the former deputy of the CUP in Parliament Anna Gabriel and the former Catalan councilor Meritxell Serret, who after returning from Switzerland and Belgium , respectively, gave a statement before the 'procés' instructor and he released them to later end the investigation and move to trial.

On January 12, Llarena reviewed the situation of Ponsatí and the other fugitives from 1-O to adapt it to the latest penal reform. In the case of the former counselor, it ratified her prosecution in absentia but replaced the crime of sedition that she was charged with that of disobedience, due to the repeal of the first offense, and suspended the European and international arrest warrants to issue a new national one in order to take her statement.

It should be remembered that the crime for which Ponsatí is prosecuted, that of disobedience, is not punishable by jail but by a fine of three to twelve months and special disqualification from employment or public office for a period of six months to two years.

Ponsatí has ​​been arrested after giving a press conference in which she explained that she has not returned to Catalonia "to agree but to stand up." From the Plaza de la Catedral in Barcelona she has been taken to the City of Justice, where she has filed a 'habeas corpus' petition denouncing an illegal detention.

The former counselor's defense alleges that her arrest was a "serious mistake" because she enjoys the immunity of any member of the European Parliament, according to the sources consulted.

In her resolution this Tuesday, Llarena insists that her status as an MEP does not prevent her from being detained in Spain so that she can give a statement and the legal proceedings can be completed, based on the judgment handed down on December 19, 2019 by the Court of Justice. of the EU (CJEU) regarding the former Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras.

In this sense, it recalls that said sentence includes that the operation in Spain of the immunity provided by the European Parliament to those processed by the 1-O will be governed by "the privileges recognized to the members of the national Parliament".

"This remission implies the viability of the search, arrest and eventual imprisonment orders adopted after the prosecution (...), without them being conditioned on the request for a request or lifting of the immunity that affects them" Llarena explains.

In this context, it emphasizes that Ponsatí and the other fugitives from 1-O "were prosecuted by order of March 21, 2018", achieving European Parliamentary immunity later, on June 13, 2019, for which reason "the petition request for the adoption of the agreed measures.

To maintain the opposite, as Ponsatí and the other fugitives do, "pretending that immunity has a similar scope in the national territory itself as in the territory of any other Member State", implies contravening the "diversity" contemplated by community regulations, he rivets The magistrate.

IT WOULD BREAK THE "BALANCE OF POWERS"

Llarena reasons that "understanding that immunity operates beyond the procedural moment literally marked in the previous norms would mean going beyond the space constitutionally reserved for that guarantee."

"It would imply forgetting that immunity protects against the opening of processes designed to alter and disturb the normal functioning of the legislative chamber, not to prevent the outcome of a criminal case in which the elected deputy or senator has already been prosecuted," he stresses. .

It thus concludes that "the requirement of legislative authorization for the Judiciary to complete a criminal proceeding initiated when the defendants were not elected representatives or senators would mean subordinating the exercise of jurisdictional power to a parliamentary guardianship outside the balance of powers."

For Llarena, "there is no constitutional justification that the normal development of a process completed in its investigation, and whose prosecution has been aborted because the defendants are not available to Justice and because prosecution in their absence is outlawed in our legal system, requires for its democratic normality the 'nihil obstat' of the parliamentary body".

However, it insists that, if "in the future the accused were materially deprived of liberty in Spain, if it were considered justified and effective to maintain the deprivation of liberty beyond the precise time to enable the progress of the procedure (... ), the authorization to attend the different parliamentary meetings would not be excluded, as long as their immunity had not been suspended".

Although the thread qualifies that the possibility of provisional detention for the criminal process to advance "is not contemplated" with respect to Ponsatí "in attention to the qualification of the facts that are attributed to him", which do not carry a prison sentence.